Frank Anthony Sturgis , born as Frank Angelo Fiorini, (December 9, 1924 - December 4, 1993) was one of the Watergate burglars. He served in Fidel Castro's revolutionary army and later trained Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs Invasion. December 9 is the 343rd day (344th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1924 (MCMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... December 4 is the 338th day (339th on leap years) of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1993 (MCMXCIII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... The Watergate building. ... Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) has led Cuba since 1959, when, leading the 26th of July Movement, he overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista, and transformed Cuba into the first Communist state in the Western Hemisphere. ... Cuban poster warning before invasion showing a soldier armed with a RPD machine gun. ...

As a child Frank Fiorini Sturgis's family moved to Philadelphia. In 1942 Sturgis joined the United States Marines and during the Second World War served in the Pacific. United States Marine Corps Emblem The United States Marine Corps (USMC) is the second smallest of the five branches of the United States armed forces, with 170,000 active and 40,000 reserve Marines as of 2002. ...

After the war Sturgis attended the Virginia Polytechnic Institute before becoming the manager of the Whitehorse Tavern. He also served in the U.S. Army (1950-52). This was followed by a spell as the owner-manager of Tophat Nightclub in Virginia Beach. This article or section should include material from Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. ... The Army is the branch of the United States armed forces which has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ... Part of the Virginia Beach oceanfront resort strip. ...

Entry into intelligence operations

In 1956 Sturgis moved to Cuba. He also spent time in Mexico; Venezuela, Costa Rica; Guatemala, Panama and Honduras. It is believed that during this time Sturgis worked undercover as a secret agent for the Central Intelligence Agency. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an American intelligence agency, responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. Government. ...

Sturgis also became involved in gunrunning to Cuba. On July 30, 1958, Sturgis was arrested for illegal possession of arms, but was released without charge. There is some evidence that in 1959 Sturgis had contact with Lewis McWillie, the manager of the Tropicana Casino.

After Fidel Castro gained control of Cuba, Sturgis formed the Anti-Communist Brigade. In his book, Counter-Revolutionary Agent, Hans Tanner claims that the organization was "being financed by dispossessed hotel and gambling owners" who operated under Fulgencio Batista. Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) has led Cuba since 1959, when, leading the 26th of July Movement, he overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista, and transformed Cuba into the first Communist state in the Western Hemisphere. ... Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar General Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was the de facto leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1940 and the countrys de jure President from 1940 to 1944 and again, after a coup, from 1952 to 1959. ...

In 1959 Sturgis became involved with Marita Lorenz, who was having an affair with Fidel Castro. In January 1960, Sturgis and Lorenz took part in a failed attempt to poison Castro. It is also believed that Sturgis was involved in helping the CIA organize the Bay of Pigs invasion. Cuban poster warning before invasion showing a soldier armed with a RPD machine gun. ...

Sturgis was also a member of Operation 40. He later explained: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time. Actually, they were operating out of Mexico, too."

JFK Assassination connections

In an article published in the Florida Sun Sentinel on 4th December, 1963, Jim Buchanan claimed that Sturgis had met Lee Harvey Oswald in Miami shortly before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Buchanan claimed that Oswald had tried to infiltrate the Anti-Communist Brigade. When he was questioned by the FBI about this story, Sturgis claimed that Buchanan had misquoted him regarding his comments about Oswald. This photo, showing Oswald wielding a rifle, a handgun, and the newspapers The Militant and The Worker, was one of three taken on March 31, 1963 in the backyard of his Dallas home by his wife Marina. ... For other uses, see JFK (disambiguation) or John Kennedy (disambiguation). ...

According to a memo sent by L. Patrick Gray, Director of the FBI, to H. R. Haldeman in 1972: "Sources in Miami say he (Sturgis) is now associated with organized crime activities". In his book, Assassination of JFK (1977), Bernard Fensterwald claims that Sturgis was heavily involved with the Mafia, particularly with Santos Trafficante and Meyer Lansky activities in Florida. Louis Patrick Gray III (July 18, 1916 – July 6, 2005) was acting director of the FBI from 1972-73. ... H.R. Haldeman, January 21, 1971. ... The Mafia (or sometimes incorrectly written Maffia), also referred to in Italian as Cosa Nostra (lit. ... Santo Trafficante, Jr. ... Meyer Lansky (born Majer Suchowliński, July 4, 1902 – January 15, 1983), was a gangster born in Grodno, then part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth occupied by the Russian Empire but now in Belarus. ...

The Rockefeller Commission of the U.S. Congress in 1974 regarded Frank Sturgis and Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt as suspects in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Support for this claim came from a figure from the 1960s counterculture, Kerry Thornley, who believed he had on several occasions from 1961-63 conversed with Hunt (whom Thornley claimed used the alias "Gary Kirstein") regarding plans to assassinate John F. Kennedy while Thornley had been living in New Orleans. Newsweek magazine reported and printed photographs of two men bearing the likeness of Hunt and Sturgis who were detained at the grassy knoll shortly after the assaassination. The Newsweek article stated the official reports that the men were released and were only "railroad bums" who would find shelter sleeping in the boxcars of the trains located near the grassy knoll. According to Newsweek the men were released without further inquiry. The Newsweek article appearing with the published photographs that bear the strong likeness to Hunt and Sturgis ask the reader to make their own determination.

Watergate burglary

On 17th June, 1972, Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, Bernard L. Barker and James W. McCord were arrested while removing electronic devices from the Democratic Party campaign offices in an apartment block called Watergate. The phone number of E.Howard Hunt was found in address books of the burglars. Reporters were now able to link the break-in to the White House. Bob Woodward, a reporter working for the Washington Post was told by a friend who was employed by the government, that senior aides of President Richard Nixon, had paid the burglars to obtain information about its political opponents. ...

In prison

In January, 1973, Sturgis, E.Howard Hunt, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, Bernard L. Barker, Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. While in prison Sturgis gave an interview to Andrew St. George. Sturgis told St. George: "I will never leave this jail alive if what we discussed about Watergate does not remain a secret between us. If you attempt to publish what I've told you, I am a dead man." The Watergate building. ...

St. George's article was published in True Magazine in August, 1974. Sturgis claims that the Watergate burglars had been instructed to find a particular document in the Democratic Party offices. This was a "secret memorandum from the Castro government" that included details of CIA covert actions. Sturgis said "that the Castro government suspected the CIA did not tell the whole truth about this operations even to American political leaders".

In 1976 Sturgis gave a series of interviews where he claimed that the assassination of John F. Kennedy had been organized by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. According to Sturgis, Lee Harvey Oswald had been working in America as a Cuban agent. Che Guevara Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara or el Che, was an Argentinian-born physician and Marxist revolutionary best known for his prominent role as a guerrilla leader during the Cuban Revolution. ...

In November, 1977, Marita Lorenz gave an interview to the New York Daily News in which she claimed that a group called Operation 40, that included Sturgis and Lee Harvey Oswald, were involved in a conspiracy to kill both John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro. New York Daily News Building, Raymond Hood, architect, rendering by Hugh Ferriss The New York Daily News is one of the largest newspapers in the United States with a circulation well over 700,000. ...

In August, 1978, Victor Marchetti published an article about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the Liberty Lobby newspaper, Spotlight. In the article Marchetti argued that the House Special Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had obtained a 1966 CIA memo that revealed Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt and Gerry Patrick Hemming had been involved in the plot to kill Kennedy. Marchetti's article also included a story that Marita Lorenz had provided information on this plot. Later that month Joseph Trento and Jacquie Powers wrote a similar story for the Sunday News Journal. Liberty Lobby was a right-wing political advocacy organization which existed in the United States between 1955 and 2001. ... Spotlight can refer to: SpotLight - a diagnostic application developed by CaseBank Technologies Spotlight - a search technology integrated into the Mac OS X operating system The Spotlight a weekly US newspaper, now out of print In theatre, a spotlight is a particular type of stage lighting which can be used to...

The HSCA did not publish this CIA memo linking its agents to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Hunt now decided to take legal action against the Liberty Lobby and in December, 1981, he was awarded $650,000 in damages. Liberty Lobby appealed to the United States Court of Appeals. It was claimed that Hunt's attorney, Ellis Rubin, had offered a clearly erroneous instruction as to the law of defamation. The three-judge panel agreed and the case was retried. This time Mark Lane defended the Liberty Lobby against Hunt's action. Mark Lane can be: Mark Lane (author) the JFK assassination researcher who wrote Rush to Judgment Mark Lane tube station in the London Underground This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Lane eventually discovered Marchetti’s sources. The main source was William Corson. It also emerged that Marchetti had also consulted James Angleton and Alan J. Weberman before publishing the article. As a result of obtaining of getting depositions from David Atlee Phillips, Richard Helms, G. Gordon Liddy, Stansfield Turner and Marita Lorenz, plus a skillful cross-examination by Lane of E. Howard Hunt, the jury decided in January, 1995, that Marchetti had not been guilty of libel when he suggested that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated by people working for the CIA. James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917–May 12, 1987), known to friends and colleagues as Jim and nicknamed the Kingfisher, was the long-serving director of the CIAs counter-intelligence division, an occasional poetry aficionado, and an avid fly-fisherman and orchid-grower. ... Richard McGarrah Helms (March 30, 1913 – October 23, 2002) was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. ... George Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1930) was the chief operative for President Richard Nixons White House Plumbers unit when they broke into the Watergate complex, which at the time was the headquarters of the Democratic National Convention, in 1972. ... Stansfield Turner (born 1st December, 1923) was a U.S. admiral. ...

Lorenz also testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations where she claimed that Sturgis had been one of the gunmen who fired on John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Sturgis testified that he had been engaged in various "adventures" relating to Cuba which he believed to have been organized and financed by the CIA.

Sturgis denied that he had been involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Sturgis testified that he was in Miami throughout the day of the assassination, and his testimony was supported by that of his wife and a nephew of his wife. The committee dismissed Lorenz's testimony, as they were unable to find any other evidence to support it.

Frank Sturgis died on 4th December, 1993.